[3.4] Dominating Guardian - A Speculative Heraldic Summoner

Hey folks, after checking out the patchnotes for 3.4, the one thing that interested me most was the new Herald of Purity, the reworked Dominating Blow and the related Guardian Ascendancy passives. It seems there's some synergy between the three and I want to try something new in Delve.

This is my first time making a build basically from scratch. Also right now there's no details on the Herald of Purity or Agony and the new Dominating Blow isn't in POB, so it's in a pretty rough state in terms of actually predicting what it'll be like.

Prayer of Glory has been replaced by a new notable -- Radiant Crusade: You and Allies affected by your Aura Skills deal 20% increased Damage, 10% increased Area of Effect for each Summoned Sentinel of Purity, 10% more Damage while you have at least 1 nearby Ally, Herald of Purity has 40% increased Buff Effect, and Summoned Sentinels of Purity have 50% increased Area of Effect.

Added a new notable which requires Radiant Crusade -- Unwavering Crusade: Summoned Sentinels use Crusade Slam, 100% increased Minion Accuracy Rating, Minions Intimidate Enemies for 4 seconds on Hit, and if you've Hit an Enemy Recently, you and nearby Allies Regenerate 3% of Life per second.

Will the Sentinels from Dominating Blow also Crusade Slam? They're sentinels, too, so they might. This means you can have 13+4 slamming minions just from the Herald + Dominating Blow.

Now when you hit an enemy with Dominating Blow, you will apply a debuff for a short duration. If a non-unique enemy dies while affected by the debuff, its corpse will be consumed, and a Sentinel of Dominance minion with the same rarity and mods will be summoned.

It seems like this build will be able to clear as well as kill bosses. It certainly seems like your minions will be getting lots of buffs from the tree, so I expect they will probably be good.

Gems

Spoiler

We use Dominating Blow as our main skill, and Herald of Purity as support.

Two reasons why I chose accuracy instead of Faster Attacks: chance to hit on the main skill, and also I've read that accuracy on melee minions is crucial to their damage. If it turns out there's enough accuracy on the tree for the minions from Dom Blow, then it might be sufficient to get good accuracy rolls on rings/gloves for the main skill to do it's thing.

Empower seems like it'd be a good choice for supporting the Herald(s), since it should end up scaling not only the boost from the Herald(s), but the minions it spawns as well. Until we see the gem it's hard to say what's good to support it with, but a curse on hit setup would work well, I think. Punishment buffs all our minions. Warlords Mark could be used here for no-regen maps, maybe. Note - these are being reserved on life with The Covenant.

Vaal Discipline - Hatred - Arctic Armour - Enlighten (2 only)

Reserving 99% of our mana (with Memory Vault) gives us a bunch of ES. If you can get a level 3 Enlighten you get a bunch more mana to work with, but this build has over 10,000 mana, so 1% is enough, or should be.

CWDT - Immortal Call - Increased Duration - Convocation

Leap Slam - Faster Attacks - Summon Stone Golem - Fortify

Gear

Spoiler

Uniques are all exceptionally cheap, none are historically worth more than 1c. Rares and the Enlighten are what is going to cost most. The new Chaber Cairn could be a bit expensive depending on how often the prophecy procs, but I have a feeling it'll be very affordable, the base is 1 alch (and realistically will probably be used from level 40). Here's hoping it's not another mirror tier prophecy.

Core Items

Chaber Cairn

Spoiler

Memory Vault
The Covenant
Coruscating Elixir
4x Healthy Mind

Chaber Cairn fits exactly what we're trying to do, even down to the added mana. The Covenant is how we reserve our life for our Heralds. The other options include Shavs, or CI, which means you lose some of your reservations and armor. Personally, I don't mind having to use a Coruscating Elixir, at quality 20 it lasts almost 9 seconds. If you're in an area with lots of poison, you could always switch off some of your reservations on life, leaving just the one Herald, which leaves you with over 500 life, which really should give you enough margin to make sure you Elixir in time.

Start with whatever until level 12, then use Sunder until 16, when you get Heralds, then slap on HoPurity and HoAsh, get Dominating Blow at level 28 and start levelling your auras.
Bang dudes with whatever weapon has the most DPS until you hit 40 then get a Chober Chaber. Buy the prophecy to upgrade it at some point, or just buy one at level 60. Your 4L will probably be something like Dom Blow, Melee Phys, Splash, Faster Attacks/Ruthless. Ancestral Call apparently doesn't apply to minions so we won't bother supporting Dominating Blow with that.

Possibilty when levelling to use Facebreakers (even into lategame) because our herald gives us a bunch of flat phys, we can get flat phys on low level belts and abyss jewels. In my experience facebreakers has lots of damage in levelling.
Alternatively, get infernal blow at 12, then at 16, get facebreakers, meginords and a deep one's hide at level 20. Le Hup is a nice levelling ring.

After merc lab, probably, you'll get Radiant Faith, switch to ES and reserve your lifepool for more auras. The other option is to get Radiant Faith in Cruel lab, around level 49 when you get access to The Covenant, and start reserving your life for auras then. If you were smarter than me you could probably calculate which option was better.

After merc lab, probably, you'll get Radiant Faith, switch to ES and reserve your lifepool for more auras. The other option is to get Radiant Faith in Cruel lab, around level 49 when you get access to The Covenant, and start reserving your life for auras then. If you were smarter than me you could probably calculate which option was better. I don't plan on switching to ES until after merclab, because I imagine my ES gear won't be any good before that point.

Kill all bandits

Get that pantheon that makes you immune to Poison, and whatever else floats your boat.

Pros - Cons - Final Thoughts

Map Mods that would suck would include:
Phys Reflect
No Regen

You might be able to get around no regen with warlords mark or mana leech instead of accuracy on Dom Blow.

Endgame is showing 102 unreserved mana, with a 6L infernal blow costing ~50 mana, but the mana regen is over 620, so I imagine that you won't have an issue with mana for attacking. You could get a higher level Enlighten to free up more, then you'd be laughing.

The POB warrior stats all look pretty fine but i can't imagine this would be pleasant to play. It has no give anywhere, everything is so minmaxed. You have to keep up the elixir 24/7, if you get chain hit you can't leap or do anything. It probably works when nothing goes wrong though?

I'd be interested in knowing how it works though, maybe its not as unpleasant as i imagine.

It should, since Dom Blow would work with it, and all the added flat phys would be great, but the build is 'link starved'.

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How do you deal against chaos damage? only 1 coruscating elixir?

Yeah, but I'm thinking eventually you'd want a shav's which means dropping some of the reservations, which will probably end up being okay. Shavs is also significantly more expensive than anything else in the build and I'm considering this as a league starter, which is why there's some compromise that needs to be made.

Yeah, but I'm thinking eventually you'd want a shav's which means dropping some of the reservations, which will probably end up being okay. Shavs is also significantly more expensive than anything else in the build and I'm considering this as a league starter, which is why there's some compromise that needs to be made.

I think for personal preference i would like to swap MOM for Righteous Decree (Because i loathe playing with MOM)

I also think i would keep the health investment a bit lower until i get shavs.

But yea, this build seems super tanky and it has a lot of fun memes going. If dom blow ends up being good it might be a lot of fun. If not maybe it would be possible to respec into smite and dealing a bit more damage on your own.